Pearl Sullivan, the incoming dean of Waterloo Engineering, says she comes into work each day to be inspired.

"I love the energy of the university. I feel energized around students. My colleagues are always coming up with amazing new research directions," says Sullivan who will succeed Adel Sedra as dean of engineering on July 1, 2012.

With plans to take a sabbatical to Australia next year, Sullivan was surprised and honoured when she was nominated by colleagues and students as the candidate for dean.

"I consider it a privilege to be asked to lead the largest Engineering Faculty in Canada," she says. "More important, this is a dynamic place filled with talent and ideas."

Sullivan is the founding director of Waterloo’s graduate program in nanotechnology within the faculties of engineering and science and recently stepped down as chair of mechanical and mechatronics engineering, a role she had held since 2006. Fathy Ismail, a mechanical and mechatronics engineering professor, will serve as interim chair until the end of this year.

Guided by Vision 2015, the Faculty's new strategic plan, Waterloo Engineering will have clear priorities for the next few years.

"This plan aspires to make us the destination of choice and I want to make sure it's implemented," she says. "It is part of a longer vision to ensure Waterloo Engineering maintains its role as a leader in engineering education and research in this country and globally.”

"The engineering profession has changed profoundly and we need to inject creativity, innovation and entrepreneurial thinking into our learning environment," she explains. "With the best architecture school in Canada and the Conrad Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology Centre (CBET) as part of the Faculty, we have the opportunity to build on our co-op success and define the engineer of the future. We also need to leap forward in professional graduate education.”

She points out that workplace innovation is critical to the economic future of the country. Engineers Canada has noted that Canada is facing a severe shortage of engineers with specialized, experienced-based technical skills. Sullivan would like to see Waterloo Engineering become the interchange for upgrading engineers in strategic areas.

“Working engineers would be brought back to the classroom through the internet.  Industry would send their engineers to campus for short periods to work on interdisciplinary projects," she says. "The interchange experience would directly transfer research innovations to industry.  It might even create new start-ups. It would be like a reverse co-op experience."

As the first woman to lead Waterloo Engineering and just the fourth across Canada to head an engineering faculty Sullivan would like to be known as a mentor, rather than a role model.

"When I think of a role model it's an ideal state and I'm certainly not infallible," she laughs.

Sullivan has had a distinguished academic career. Before joining Waterloo in 2004, she was a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of New Brunswick and a lecturer and visiting professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

"I love to teach," she says. "I can't think of a more important life commitment than educating our future generations of engineers and researchers."